The decisions that shape most of a site, and the trade-offs behind each: what kinds of content it holds, which are pages, what is defined once and reused, and where fields are defined.
A few decisions shape most of a site, and they are easy to make by accident while writing templates. The pages in this section explain what each choice does in the CMS. There is almost always more than one valid way to build a site, so treat these as questions to think through and write your reasons down, not as rules. One useful order: • What kinds of content does the site hold, which are built in, and which need a datastore of their own? (Content Types) • Which of them are pages, with their own URL? (Defining Pages) • Which content appears in more than one place, and where is it defined? (Reusing Content, which also covers whether a section reads fields on the page or queries content stored elsewhere) • Which template defines each custom field? (Where Custom Fields Belong)
Datastores raise choices of their own: Datastore Design covers a datastore's landing page, whether its items have pages, and where their fields are defined. Which CMS objects a finished site needs, and what to confirm before launch, is covered in Production Readiness. Whether to follow Marketpath Site Standards 1 is a choice worth recording; MPSS1 is recommended for nearly every site.